Another vote for insulation. Heating and cooling become soooo much more efficient with blown in attic insulation. Double check the level you have and upgrade. Many older houses have little to no insulation. If that's the case you will make all of the money back that you spend insulating in the first year. There are also incentives to add insulation depending on the state. We were able to use a rebate program to get back over a third of what we spent to put in the new insulation.

For the last year or so, I've been getting these two page energy assessment reports in the mail from Pacific Gas & Electric, our California utility company, comparing our household's energy use to those of the houses around us. Here's the relevant excerpts from the latest report; click throug...

On Wednesday, I'm heading to GenCon in Indianapolis. I had a great time when I was there before, and I'm looking forward to attending this year. Here's what you need to know, from GenCon: Wil will be signing autographs in the Autograph Area of the Exhibit Hall, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mo...

A few days ago, I Twittered: "I can't stop laughing at the bigots who celebrated their solidarity with each other by gorging themselves on shitty fast food. Bravo, jerks." I still think it's silly that eating at a fast food restaurant is considered political activism today, but that's not what t...

In the world of entertainment, there are things that make me laugh, there are things that make me cry, and there are the rare things that work on so many different levels, or are so surprising, they simply drop my jaw to the floor and blow my mind. This cover of Poker Face by Molly Lewis is one ...

My brother had one of the coolest cats in the world. We called him Freddy Snowpants, because he had furry fat hind legs that looked like he was wearing snowpants when he walked. One of my favorite things to do was stand behind him and make the "zip zip zip" noise, which always resulted in much m...

Dude, you are not fucking old. You are only two years older than I am and I'm not even close to fucking old.
Read this book if you have chronic back pain or spasms.
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446392308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242671616&sr=8-1
Then get yourself some sort of exercise equipment and start working out. For chrissakes if you spend 30 minutes a day doing some intensive work you will be fine. Exercise will make you think and feel better.
There are people out there, normal people like you and me, that are running marathons at 70 years old. My friend's grandfather ran two miles a day into his 80s. I want to be those guys, not the guy who sits in a chair all the time and can barely get up to walk around. Once you stop moving, you die, that's a fact.
People everywhere drive like assholes. Honestly if I were you and my kids had just started driving I'd make them get pre-approval before taking other kids with them driving at least for the first year. It's that first year where distractions can really cause a problem. Having other kids in the car is a major distraction.
My father really made a point of having me wear seatbelts and one saved my life in an accident. Good on you for making your kids do the same.

Want to know how I know that I'm old, out of shape, spend too much time sitting at my desk and writing, and not enough time exercising? I hurt my back yesterday ... by standing up. Yep. That's it. Doorbell rang, I stood up to go to the door, and the whole right side of my back seized up. Goodtim...

LOL! Acererak really is a huge asshole in addition to having a name that is annoying to pronounce. As players you really want to curse him out multiple times during the adventure, but you probably give up because you stumble over the name so much.

Edits on Memories of the Future are coming along quite nicely. It's always a good sign when I'm having fun and enjoying myself, instead of gnashing my teeth and pacing around my office listing all the reasons I suck and should never pick up a pen again in my life. (It happens more frequently tha...

Edits on Memories of the Future are coming along quite nicely. It's always a good sign when I'm having fun and enjoying myself, instead of gnashing my teeth and pacing around my office listing all the reasons I suck and should never pick up a pen again in my life. (It happens more frequently tha...

I'm editing Memories of the Future, and ... well, this bit from Hide & Q made me laugh: Riker explains that, even though he's pretty much a golden god, he's still the same old lovable Riker they've known for ten episodes, and to show them how totally awesome he is, he's going to give some gifts ...

So wrong, but yet so right.
Patrick seems like he will do pretty much anything self deprecating without any qualms. His episode of Extras was just beyond hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_cwI1Xj4M

If you only have 3 minutes to spend watching an awesome video today, I hope you'll spend it watching the trailer for this Sunday's TNG reunion show on Family Guy. I didn't get to work with any of the TNG cast when I recorded my scenes, but I just love it that we all came back to do this show...

Ha ha! This is great. You did a really good job with the DMing, especially on the fly as it were. I remember DMing a campaign for some friends of mine back in 1990 or so with music on and everything and it turned out really well, but I had prepared everything ahead of time. A little improvisation on the existing template makes things seem a lot more interesting than if you are reading off the page the whole time, but at the same time you have to make the players feel like they have a choice at what they are doing even while you are funneling them through the places you want them to go.

Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome ne...

One of the super-useful bits of advice I picked up somewhere about writing and blogging goes like this: most people can't write for a book and a blog at the same time, because our brains get different kinds of feedback and rewards from each. For most of us, if we had to pick, we'll write in our ...

They have had in the past books devoted to quick and dirty one off quests and adventures. They called them The Book of Lairs. Pretty sure there were at least two of them back around 1st or 2nd edition and that I have them both in a closet somewhere. Those were very convenient for inserting little quests into your adventure to give your players an experience bump and some entertainment outside of your main story.
Yeah, just Googled and there were two, I have both of these.
http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd1/ref3.htm
http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd1/ref4.htm

The fourth edition Dungeon Master's Guide is the DM's guide I've wanted to read since I was a kid. Unlike previous editions, which were filled with all kinds of stat blocks and very little information on actually running a game, the 4E DMG could also be called The Art of Dungeon Mastering, becau...

Wil, if you haven't already you should read The Immortal Iron Fist. Brubaker and Fraction did a bang up job on that series from the get go taking a minor league character and making him cool.
I love Brubaker's Cap as well. I haven't enjoyed the character this much since the Kirby days.

My friend Ed wrote an insanely cool original web series called Angel of Death that debuts today on Crackle. Angel of Death stars Zoe Bell (who you've seen double all kinds of people, but probably didn't know it. She also spent much of Death Proof riding around on the hood of a car being awesome)...

I figured most authors being the intelligent rational humans they are would come out against this guy's stand on this issue.
I really makes no sense at all. The automated reading software is just not even close to a nuanced performance by an actual person. It certainly doesn't replace it and it's doubtful it will get there anytime soon, but even if it does it's not like they can duplicate Wil Wheaton's voice and mannerisms to read the book. There is always the uniqueness of the person reading to push when selling the audiobook.
And if they do get to the point where they can duplicate Wil as an AI in our lifetimes then I want to be Neo when we all get installed into the Matrix.

There's quite a dustup at the moment about an editorial the president of the Author's Guild wrote in the New York Times, railing against Amazon's Kindle 2, which has a text to speech feature that he claims creates unauthorized derivative works and should be stopped at all costs. I'm not the only...

I work with geeks all day long and my wife is a closet geek as well so this never happens to me. I'm usually the one who has to break off and go back to work after my CTO regales me with tales of his new purchases for the 360.
Although I was wearing a VS (super-hero card game that I played for a few years made by UDE) t-shirt with the DC Comics logo on it in the grocery store one day when the cashier looked at me and went, "Awesome, I love comics! What is your favorite?" I was so surprised I managed to grunt out something like, "Er, me too" before stumbling away. Given that I have about thirty dealer boxes of comics, a fact that I never mention to anyone usually, I probably should have been better prepared for something like that.

I told my wife, "You know, I haven't gotten past the first screen of Space Invaders in at least 20 years. I think I need to practice more." I thought for a second. "Train for it, I guess, is what I'm saying." She looked at me. "Train for what?" "Oh, um." I said, "you know, just to get bette...

I was completely hockey ignorant for most of my life because I grew up in Hawaii and ice was only found in my cold drinks. I learned all about who was who in hockey by playing the various NHL Hockey games for the Sega Genesis in college. I used to dominate people at those games.
I'd have to concur with one of the posters that hockey on TV is terrible unless it is in HD. You can't even make out the puck in SD. Hockey though is one of those sports that you have to experience in person to really get.

Sunday morning, Nolan and I watched the Penguins play the Capitals in the NHL's game of the week on NBC. It was considerably more exciting than the previous week's contest between alleged rivals the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers, where someone forgot to tell the Rangers to show up and...

Sunday morning, Nolan and I watched the Penguins play the Capitals in the NHL's game of the week on NBC. It was considerably more exciting than the previous week's contest between alleged rivals the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers, where someone forgot to tell the Rangers to show up and...

I just came across two more cool things from the Phoenix Comicon that I thought were worth sharing. First, here's a little clip of Me, Yuri, and Aaron on our Look At Us Because We're Geeks panel: And here I am making a tough guy pose with Daniel from Steamcrow and Monster Commute: I really ...

Note: I'm not going to bury the lede: If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes. Now, here's the story behind my decision to offer this format... I took some time on Saturday afternoon to answer a bunch of e-mail, includ...

My table in the vendor's room at the Phoenix Comicon was right next to Aaron Douglas. Aaron is a good friend, and he knows that I'm a huge fan of his show and admirer of his work. He also knows that I'm way behind on BSG (near the end of season 3) so he's made this heroic effort to protect me fr...

Okey dokey. Sounds cool.
I'm just jonesing for more of those as they are really interesting and amusing overall.
I guess I was also curious about some of your impressions about working on later episodes rather than the somewhat cheesy season one eps.
All in good time I'm sure.

Note: I'm not going to bury the lede: If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes. Now, here's the story behind my decision to offer this format... I took some time on Saturday afternoon to answer a bunch of e-mail, includ...

Note: I'm not going to bury the lede: If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes. Now, here's the story behind my decision to offer this format... I took some time on Saturday afternoon to answer a bunch of e-mail, includ...

My table in the vendor's room at the Phoenix Comicon was right next to Aaron Douglas. Aaron is a good friend, and he knows that I'm a huge fan of his show and admirer of his work. He also knows that I'm way behind on BSG (near the end of season 3) so he's made this heroic effort to protect me fr...

Whenever a sci-fi star from my childhood shows up in your daily life I know things are headed down a strange path. See WFS.
When that star then spoils a current sci-fi show for you while you are sitting next to one of the stars of that current show it's become truly bizarre.
I do think it's cool that Gil is a fan of a show like BSG. I hate it when people do sci-fi and make their living off of sci-fi, but really don't like sci-fi. See WFS.

My table in the vendor's room at the Phoenix Comicon was right next to Aaron Douglas. Aaron is a good friend, and he knows that I'm a huge fan of his show and admirer of his work. He also knows that I'm way behind on BSG (near the end of season 3) so he's made this heroic effort to protect me fr...